Tyre | Biblical Sites | Walk With Jesus

Tyre was a great Phoenician maritime city, famed for seafaring and for founding colonies such as Carthage and Cadiz. Its original core was an offshore island fortress. In 332 BC Alexander the Great besieged it and built a causeway out to the island; over the centuries silt built up around that mole, turning it into the isthmus that joins Tyre to the mainland today. The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with substantial Roman and Byzantine remains including the Al-Bass necropolis, a colonnaded avenue, a triumphal arch, an aqueduct, and one of the largest surviving Roman hippodromes. Ezekiel 26-28 pronounces judgment oracles against Tyre. The city, Alexander's siege and causeway, and the surviving ruins are all well attested historically and archaeologically.

Where it is: Southern coast of Lebanon
Scripture: Ezekiel 26:1-14 · Ezekiel 27-28

What the evidence confirmsTyre's existence as a major Phoenician city, Alexander's 332 BC siege and causeway (now the silted isthmus), and its extensive Roman-era ruins are all well documented and visible today as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

What it does not provePopular apologetic readings that Ezekiel's oracle was 'fulfilled to the letter' — that Tyre was scraped bare and never rebuilt — are debated: Tyre remained inhabited after these events and is a living city today. The prophecy is best presented as scripture, not as a proven prediction.

Sources & further reading